Republican governors not so popular this year

It’s not a good year for many of the new Republican governors. After a year in office, their approval ratings are sinking like stones. The last one I saw for Gov. Nikki Haley was around 35 percent. But she’s not alone.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has a 32 percent approval rating, the lowest ever. He, along with his colleagues, have misunderstood their wins and begun a path of overreaching that is leading downhill. They got it wrong — the elections were not an ideological mandate. Their use of a fiscal crisis to do whatever they want is not working.

In Wisconsin, more than 1 million signatures have been gathered for the recall of Gov. Scott Walker. This will be an ugly battle, with excess money coming from out of state to fight his opponents, who want to retain the policies that were in place before he ran on one set of issues, and once in office, began his crusade against collective bargaining. He has supported a very unpleasant and sometimes not very legal way to change laws. But those with the money got him elected, and now they are coming for their payback. Kudos to those who want to recall him.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasick’s approval rating is about 38 percent, and after he managed to ram through a bill to restrict the rights of public workers to collectively bargain, he got a big surprise. The voters, with a vote of 62 percent to 38 percent, voted to repeal the bill. In Ohio they can do that. His statement that the voters have spoken was sweet. Yes, they did.

Gov. Paul LePage of Maine found, to his regret, that the voters of Maine don’t care for voter suppression, and outdid him in his quest for ultimate power.

The most unbelievable, and the least covered by the media, is Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan. A Forbes article of March 2011, describes one of the most sweeping, anti-democratic pieces of legislation in our country. It allows the state to dissolve local governments and replace them with an emergency manager. The governor can declare a fiscal emergency in any town or city and take it over, dissolve the elected officials, and name an emergency manager to run the government.

The town of Benton Harbor, a poor town with a great view, was the first. It sure looks like the motive was nothing but money. A park that was given as a gift to the town is being turned into a golf resort. How can this be allowed to happen?

Gov. Haley said, in her State of the State speech recently, that South Carolina is surging. Not quite, unless surging now means going downhill. Her approval rating is low even among Republicans. She accused unions of thriving in the dark and using secrecy as their greatest ally. This from someone who has allowed emails to be deleted. One who replaces qualified people without any reason that is made public. Her transparency is more opaque than transparent.

She claims to have created jobs, when we still have a 9.9 percent unemployment rate, and many of the jobs were from previous efforts, not hers. She praises our “right-to-work” state, even though wages and job opportunities are less in so called right to work states than in ones with unions. She says unions are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome in South Carolina. Tell that to my teacher friend and her colleagues who have not had a raise in three years. It’s no wonder these governors are not popular. But I wonder why they were elected in the first place? Certainly not for the common good, or the people.